


All-Seeing Eye

by Halogalopaghost (Lartovio)



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Brotherly Love, Eye Trauma, Fluff, Gen, Post canon, Sea grunks!, Smoking, listen alex said it's canon Stan smokes cigars, no swearing this time, very little substance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26369512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lartovio/pseuds/Halogalopaghost
Summary: Stan teases his brother for his clumsiness one day, and Ford gives him more than he bargained for. A little catching up between long-estranged brothers.
Relationships: Stanley Pines & Stanford Pines
Comments: 6
Kudos: 80





	All-Seeing Eye

Stan should have noticed sooner, that's the first thing he thinks. It’s been in front of his face in a thousand little things every day—but isn't it always in the little things? The ones he has so much trouble seeing?

First thing this morning, Ford stumbled into the galley in his underwear. Stan said good morning, and Ford said  _ coffee _ .

The next thing he knew, Ford was cursing and hissing and dancing all over. He had missed his mug entirely, pouring the piping hot coffee on the counter and the floor and basically everywhere except  _ inside _ the mug.

Stan jumped to his feet. “Dammit Ford, this is the third time in what, a week?”

While Stan threw a dish towel over the floor, Ford sat down and wiped his scalded toes with a napkin. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I failed my depth perception check.”

Stan grumbled to himself on the floor, but smiled anyway. Stupid nerd jokes. “S’okay Sixer. Just quit wastin’ good coffee, would ya?” He poured the remainder into Ford’s mug and set it down beside him. “Here, you clearly need it.”

And then they went about their day. Stan did some laundry, Ford helmed the ship, they switched places at noon for Ford to do the dishes and scribble in his captain’s log, and they stopped for dinner around 2100 hours. The same as every day.

Except today Ford broke two dishes, knocked over an inkwell, and nearly fell down the short three steps from the wheelhouse to the main deck. When they were silently eating dinner in the galley, lit only by the light over the sink and the light over the stairs, Ford went to stab up some green beans and instead stabbed the edge of the plate. The plate would have flipped if he’d been applying any more force.

“Alright, I know  _ I  _ have the coordination of a drunk hippo, but you’re usually a little more…” Stan spins his fork in the air, looking for the right word, “more  _ graceful _ than that. What's going on?”

Ford looks up innocently, mouth full of canned green beans and instant mashed potato. 

“Don’t give me the Mabel eyes, I’m immune.”

Ford nearly coughs on his laugh, only just managing to swallow his food instead of inhale it. “History begs to differ.”

Stan points his fork at Ford to continue the argument, then clamps his mouth shut. Ford knows how to distract him way too well. “Don’t change the subject on me. Do I look stupid?”

He opens his mouth to reply.

“Don’t answer that,” Stan rushes to add.

Ford smiles with a mischievous edge to it. He takes another bite, chews and swallows at his leisure, and finally answers. “My eyesight isn’t what it used to be Stanley. If I recall correctly, I do remember you also have some cataracts we need to take care of.”

“Ack,  _ we  _ nothin’, they’re my cataracts and we happen to be very attached, thank you. ‘Sides, at least I’m not pouring coffee on my feet every morning.”

That gives Ford some pause. He stiffens, in an instant going from bent over his dinner plate to ramrod straight against the chair behind him.

“Uh-huh, no good excuse for that, huh?”

His gaze doesn't lift from the table. “My right eye is entirely blind.”

A shock of pure, stunned emotion through Stan, sending his back straight too. His bite of food stays on his fork, hovering forgotten over the plate for a long moment. All he can get out of his gaping mouth is a stuttered, “ _ What?” _

Ford’s brow furrows. “You heard me, Stanley.”

“H-How long?”

He swirls patterns into his mashed potato. “Well, it began to go almost immediately. You read what I said in my third journal, I suppose?”

A breathless shake of the head. “I never got my hands on it after—after it was all put back.” After the pages that Ford ripped out and burned had been restored to the book, after Weirdmageddon, after Dipper found it again.

“Hm.” Ford puts his fork down and removes his glasses almost methodically, then puts his hands over his face. At length, he starts again. “The very first time I—I let  _ him _ in, my eye burned and stung like I'd poured salt on it. And after...after he began doing it without my permission, it became progressively worse. By the time I went through the portal it was, uh, kaput.”

His  _ eye _ . They're talking about the whole right side of his vision, an entire eyeball in his head, and he sounds so horrifyingly casual about it. He should—he should want to cry! He should be angry, he should...he should what? He's spent thirty years adjusting to it. Maybe he's just better at moving on than Stan will ever be. 

“Why didn't you say something sooner?”

Ford releases a long, shuddering sigh and lets his arms down, folded on the table. “I didn't— _ don't _ want pity. It's my own fault, so I must live with the consequences. I don’t need help.”

Yeah, yep, there it is. Stan’s hands clench into fists under the table while a coal of red-hot anger sparks to life his chest. “Stop it. It wasn't your fault, Stanford. We’ve talked about this.”

Ford smiles weakly and rubs a hand over his face again. He hasn't met Stan’s eyes yet. “Yes, yes. Alright.”

“So...so the tripping on the stairs, bumping into door frames…?”

“All a result of the lost vision. It's much better now than it was at first. I learned quickly, having to defend myself against the entire multiverse, so I’m quite well adjusted. It almost doesn't affect me at all now.”

Stan snorts. “Right.”

He finally looks up. “No really, I mean it. At first I was falling down stairs, tripping over my own feet,” he laughs, “I knocked over just about everything in my path. It's much more manageable now, but things still happen.” He gestures vaguely toward the coffee maker, referring to this morning’s incident. “Obviously.”

“How—how much can you even see?” His voice is beginning to thicken with the threat of tears. He doesn't feel like he's going to cry, he feels like going up on deck and screaming his lungs out. Ford’s had glasses damn near his entire life, the vision in his one remaining eye...can’t be good.

Ford kind of looks away, like he's trying to be casual about it. Stan, who has been swindling, conning, and gambling for the better part of his sixty years, knows immediately that his brother is about to lie. “I see well enough. I get us around, don't I?”

“Stanford.”

Ford doesn't want to put his hand over his mouth. He knows this is a liar’s tell, and Stanley can read him like a book anyway, but the tension has to go somewhere. He bites down on his lip instead. “When I went to get my new prescription...well, ah, the optometrist said I'll likely qualify as legally blind within the next decade.”

Now Stan’s hand flies to his mouth. For him, this isn't the tell of a liar, it’s the tell of a brother about to have a meltdown.

Ford picks his fork up and keeps talking like he didn't just drop a bomb. “Now, that doesn't mean I won't see anything. In fact, the qualifications of legal blindness are much different than I expected. Apparently if the vision in one eye is good enough, you aren't even considered—”

Stan stands up before he knows what he’s doing, knees banging on the table. He feels vaguely ill. “I'm going to get some air,” he says stiffly.

He takes a coat off the hook by the stairs, stomps up them, and slams the cabin door shut as he strides forward into the light snow falling. He knows he’ll have to shovel it in the morning, and that doesn’t do anything to soothe the anger flaming beneath his ribs.

For a long moment, he stares listlessly at the sea. They aren’t far enough north yet to see icebergs, but they’re getting close. He really should have something more than the one measly coat over his sweater; he’s already shivering. He stomps into the wheelhouse for its little bit of warmth and starts rummaging around the cabinets at the desk. Maps, maps, compasses, nerd stuff,  _ cigar box _ . He pulls out the first cigar he puts his hand on and lights it, hands shaking from something more than the cold.

A puff of smoke fills the wheelhouse, and the tight anger eases a little bit. After forty years, he wishes he didn’t still need nicotine to talk him down. He doesn’t smoke often nowadays, especially after Mabel caught him with a cigarette and gave him an entire PowerPoint presentation complete with pictures and videos of black, gritty smoker’s lungs. Still, nothing calms him down like a good smoke. It’s better than punching the bag til his knuckles bleed. There isn’t a punching bag on board anyway.

The cigar is a stub between his fingers and the stars have burned pinholes into his eyes by the time Ford quietly slips in. He sits at the desk, behind where Stan is leaning on the wheel, and waits for him to speak first.

He doesn’t, for a while.

“You always use your left eye with the telescope,” Stan says. “Always walk on my left, sit on my right.”

Ford doesn't even know what to say. He expected Stan to react emotionally, but...not like this.

“I should have noticed.”

“I've been compensating for years, Stanley, nobody would have.”

“I'm not nobody,” he says gruffly. His voice is getting thick again. “I'm your brother. I'm supposed to notice.”

Ford sighs softly in the silence. Neither he nor Stanley have ever been good with the details, they both gloss over the nuances in their own way to see the big picture and excitement of a situation. Their thrills have different sources, but they seek them just the same.

“I wished for a long time that I woulda come found you sooner. I used to think maybe I coulda helped, keep you from getting too close to that demon”--that’s what they call him, because neither of them can manage to get the name off their tongue--“or help you find a way to get rid of him or something. I dunno. Wishful thinking.” He takes another drag from the cigar, rolling the smoke around in his mouth before releasing it in a sigh. The anger’s gone now and all it's left is sorrow in its wake. He hears Ford shift behind him, but doesn’t turn to look.

“Stanley, I was--stars above, I was so headstrong. If Fiddleford couldn’t have stopped me, I’m sure you couldn’t have either. I don’t want you blaming yourself for this.”

“I don’t.” It’s not a lie, but it isn’t the full truth either. He’ll never stop feeling guilty for everything Stanford went through.

“For now, I’m fully capable of getting myself around. And when I can’t see anymore, I’ll learn another way of doing things. I don’t fear my future.”

Stan finally turns around and smashes the cigar butt into the ashtray by Ford’s elbow. “Just tell me this. If you hadn’t gone through that portal, would a doctor have been able to fix it?”

“No. It was long gone, Stanley. He made sure of that.”

He takes in a deep breath and nods solemnly. “Alright. Well, when you can’t see anymore, I’ll be your eyes.”

Ford smiles, small and hopeful. “You don’t have to, you know.”

Stan puts his hand on his twin’s head and bends down to meet him eye-to-eye. “You stupid head, I know that. M’gonna do it anyway. Guess I just have good motivation to get those cataracts taken care of, huh?”

Ford’s smile widens. “That’s a satisfactory arrangement.”

“C’mon, now that I know yer blind as a bat, we’re setting up that dart board. I could use a good laugh.”

Ford blanches and scrambles to follow Stan out of the wheelhouse. “That’s not fair, I was never any good at darts anyway!”

“Secret keepers don’t get to pick on game night!”

Ford could point to any one of Stan’s mystery scars or recent nightmares to level the playing field, but he doesn't need to. After thirty years with a gun at his hip, he has a feeling he’ll be able to give his brother a fair run for his money. Even with only one eye.

**Author's Note:**

> Get it? Cause he only has the one eye, so it's all-seeing....I'll *see* myself out


End file.
